Inglourious Basterds, Part XIV

14. Sabotage (1936) is the source of the clip of the boy trying to carry flammable nitrate film canisters onto a London city bus, only to be admonished by the conductor. I tack on this necessary installment to the IB film series for several reasons, one being that it is my favorite movie of pre-Hollywood Alfred Hitchcock, from whom Tarantino has inherited the mantle of master of suspense; a second being that echoes of the plot are heard in IB, involving propaganda bombings and central intrigue that revolves around a movie theater. Based on the 1907 Joseph Conrad novel, The Secret Agent, which foreshadows a century of violent terrorism in the service of revolutionary movements, Sabotage is darker, more horrifying than anything Hitchcock would make until Vertigo.